Double Tap to Wake feature brought back to unrooted Nexus 6

A few weeks back, we talked about an app that brought back the “double tap to wake” feature to the Google Nexus 6 phone, a feature that was planned to be active on the phone but was nixed by Motorola and Google at the last minute. Said app only worked on rooted Nexus 6 phones, so it still presented quite a challenge for those who don’t like/want to root their phones. Enter XDA member “_qwerp” who now presents an alternate solution for bringing back the feature to non-rooted Nexus 6 units.

Early caveat (there always seems to be one), this process is still not without its challenges, as it requires an unlocked bootloader. Granted, this is a bit easier to do through other third-party means, and one can choose to unlock their Nexus 6 bootloaders without rooting the phone itself.

The process entails installing the TWRP custom recovery to your Nexus 6, and then replacing the “power.shamu.so” folder in the “/system/lib/hw” directory of your phone with the one compiled and provided by the developer. This can be done using the TWRP file manager.

This will bring this feature back to your phone where once it was just for your friends who owned new Moto and LG units. If you decide to do this, please note that as always, it would be good to have a backup of the file you are replacing so that you are covered if anything goes to crap. Look more into the information provided by the developer via the official XDA thread here.